


Good Life (Cupcake Shop AU)

by Allusionist (Eddi_Koenig)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Cupcake Shop, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hipster Jean Kirstein, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, awkward marco, fluffy fluff that probably sucks, idk more tags later, jean is a giant dork, lots of baking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddi_Koenig/pseuds/Allusionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU, in which an angsty New Yorker named Jean Kirstein works in a cupcake and coffee shop with a soft-spoken, freckled man named Marco. After one of the kitchen bakers quits, Jean is told to take over the position, and Marco is assigned to show him the ropes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Life (Cupcake Shop AU)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know why I'm writing this thing, but why not. I'll most likely be adding more to this first chapter later, but I think it's pretty okay for now.

        Thursday. It had always been my least favorite day of the week, AKA the one that stood between me and Friday. It was sort of like the last level of Super Mario. You beat all the other onesand you think, “Hey, this isn’t so bad!” Psych. Here comes the big monster to ruin your fun. Sometimes though, they weren’t so bad. People would come into the shop that were worth talking to, I’d get a big tip, things like that. Those days weren’t as difficult to get through.

         I sat on my wooden stool behind the register, the large, gaudy sign that read “Hanji’s Cupcakes” in swirling letters hanging above my head. Every so often it would swing back and forth, some of the glitter that was glued to the letters raining down onto my shoulders. There were days when I would come home to be greeted by a bit or two in my ear. It wasn’t exactly the place where one would think a guy like myself would be working, but hey, whatever pays the bills, right?

        This particular Thursday though, was going rather slowly. The little New York cupcake shop was relatively empty, save for the few couples that came in every so often to shelter themselves from the snow that was falling heavily outside the windows. I sighed in relief as the bell on the door gave a ring, breaking the silence that had been pounding at my ears for the last two hours.

        “Hey, Jean!” a light, boyish voice rang through the small room, quite the change from the constant, low buzzing of the space heater that sat in the corner by the newspaper stacks.

        “Armin, what’s up?” I replied, trying to make casual conversation with the short blonde man. He was a fairly regular customer here, the intern for the budding software company, Maria Tech, around the corner. Naturally, he was the one who made coffee runs.

        “Nothing much, the sky, space, zero gravity,” He laughed and I cracked a smile.

        “What’ll the techies have today?” I asked him, Knowing that’s what he was there for.

        Armin thought for a moment while I took a stack of post-its and a pen from under the counter. “Well, Mikasa wanted just straight black, Eren’s in for a decaf espresso, café latte for Sasha, and Irish coffee for the boss man.” He replied.

        “Ah, drinking on the job, are we?” I smirked at the last order.

        “Well, you know how Levi is. “ Armin shrugged, giving no more of a reason than that, as I passed the order to the barista next to me.

        “Yeah, I guess. Erwin’s injury hit him pretty hard, didn’t it?” As I recalled, the muscular man had come back from Iraq with only three of the four limbs he’d left with.

        Armin opened his mouth the make a remark, when the door of the bakery kitchen swung open behind me. I whirled around in time to see Connie, one of our decorators at the cupcake shop, stomping through the door.

       “I’m sick of this cake decorating bullshit, okay? It barely even pays the bills anymore!” he yelled, stopping in the middle of the shop. He seemed to have gone into hysterics, something you wouldn’t really expect from a hole-in-the-wall bakery guy. The door swung open again. This time, a tall, lanky man with dark hair and pale, freckly skin came through it.  This was a cupcake shop, for God’s sake! It’s such a girly theme, why were no girls working in this goddamn place?

        “Connie, wait! You can’t-” he was cut off when Connie turned back around, his face distressed.

        “Marco, I’m done! I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to make beautiful things, I wanted to be somebody! And this is the best I could do?” He let out a frustrated breath. The bald, fuming man pushed open the glass door at the front of the shop and left, no more words said.

           The tall man sighed and put his arms back by his sides in defeat. “Fuck, uh….sorry. I guess he just broke today.” He shook his head and turned on his heel, retreating back into the kitchen, leaving Armin, the barista, and myself in a beyond awkwardly silent room.

        Once again, the silence was interrupted by a bell. “Arlert?” the barista called. Armin’s order was placed on the counter as the intern shuffled around his bag for his wallet.

       “Thanks guys. I should get going.” He acknowledged, dropping a twenty on the counter in front of me. “Take care of yourself, Jean!” he shouted on his way out.

        “Yeah, sure.” The door closed behind him, bringing a sweep of cold air with it. When I could no longer see the short blonde on the sidewalk, I crossed my arms on my stomach and slumped in my seat.   

 • • • •

 

        From there, the day seemed to just slow down even more. After Armin left, the only other person that came in was this yappy middle school kid who took just short of forever to decide between chocolate or red velvet. She chose strawberry. By the time my alarm went off at 6:30, I was far beyond ready to leave. Forcing myself to stand up on my legs that had now fallen asleep, I took my thick military parka from the back of the register chair. Wiggling my arms into the sleeves, I zipped it up until the collar came just below my nose. Reaching into one of my many front pockets, I pulled out my iPod, marching out onto the sidewalk. I shivered as the cold air came as a shock to me as I’d been sitting still in a heated room the whole day. I blinked twice and put my earbuds in, drowning out the sounds of the city with Mother Mother and The Postal Service.        

       I’d gotten my car towed a week ago. As a result, I was committed to making the 12 block walk to and from work until I could scrounge up the 260 dollars to pay my multiple parking tickets and get it back. At the rate of my earnings, it would take me around 3 more days until I could drive again.  I could deal with it, but that was three days too long if you ask me.  My fingers had nearly frozen off that morning, and if I were to remove them from my sleeves, I was almost sure they would this time.  

        My friend’s had asked me why I had chosen to walk in weather like this, anyway. It wasn’t like I was crazy though. I’d just lost track of the rent last month and had ended up needing to work some odd jobs to get the money to pay it with. I figured avoiding the taxi fees of New York might be a good way to conserve some of my paper and be sure there was a bit left over after the bills were paid. After all, this was the big city, right? You’d have to be practically rolling in it if you wanted to live even a semi-privileged life here.

        I’d dropped out of high school in my senior year, deciding “Hey, fuck the system!” and I’d never gone back. I earned my GED and told myself I’d go out into the real world and make something of myself. It disappointed my mother quite a bit, but at least I wasn’t one of those rich losers who rode on their parents backs until they turned thirty. I don’t think I would have been capable of doing that to her, especially when taking into consideration the shape my childhood had been in.

        Turns out though, “making something of myself” proved to be much more of a challenge than I’d thought it would be. Since I had left home at 19, I’d been juggling two jobs just to keep my dingy little apartment. I’d taken my current job out of complete desperation. It turned out to be lucky though, as this register gig paid more in 8 hours than two six hour shifts had before. I’d spent a good 6 months job hunting at retail stores, mechanic shops, teleprompters, everything you could think of. I already knew there wasn’t much you could do with just a GED, but in just one year, things had gotten harder. The fact that I even stumbled upon that little shop a year ago was a miracle. Their old cashier had to leave due to family issues, and when I asked about the job, there were no questions and no strings attached. Since then, I’d been taking free culinary classes at the recreation center near the gym, and was doing pretty well on my own two feet. To be honest, I even enjoyed cooking. It was entertaining to be able to make different things and see how they turned out. Whether people liked them, or not.

        The wind picked up as I turned the last corner that lead to my apartment complex. The snow fell faster and heavier, obscuring my vision for flickers of moments as I dragged my heavy work boots through the thick mounds that had accumulated on the ground that day. The cold air stung my nose and made my eyes tear up, the warmth mixing with the cold on my face. I burrowed deeper into my coat, and breathed out my nose, the warmth of my exhale creating a cloud in front of my face. Snowflakes fell and melted on the top of my head, reducing my hair to a freezing, wet mess by the time I fit my key clumsily into it’s place on the door knob.  

 

• • • •

 

        The apartment wasn’t exactly the most impressive one in New York, but it did the trick. I kicked off my boots at the front door, snow chunks landing on the carpet and wetting my socks when I walked towards the kitchen. Setting myself down on one of the mismatched barstools at the counter, I swallowed half a cup of now room temperature tea I’d left before work that morning.

        The landline gave a loud ring that made me jump and widen my eyes. I pressed the answer key on my phone, the tinny sounding song being replace with a person’s voice.

        “Hello?”

        “Hey, Jean! It’s Bertolt!” I’d have to take it upon myself name his contact, we’d been friends for a while, having gone to the same classes at the rec. center.

        “Ah, hey Bert, what’s up?” I responded, trying not to sound like I had just been freezing my ass off.     

        “Right, so some us from class are gonna go down to the bar tomorrow night, and I was wondering if you wanted to come? You can bring someone if you like. A few of the guys from Maria Tech are coming too.” I nodded to myself. I needed some time out of the house, and it was a Friday anyway.

        “Yeah, sure. I’ll see you guys there.” I leaned back, staring at the fan above my head.

        Bertolt hung up the phone, and I sighed. It was seven o’clock and I was near-dead tired. Groaning, I padded over to the opposite side of the counter, opening the soup cupboard and pulling from it a packet of instant macaroni. All but throwing the crude excuse of a meal into the microwave, I twiddled my thumbs and leaned against the marble counter. The microwave beeped and I sat down to another pitiful dinner of food that would probably come back to bite me in the ass. Literally.

        It was loud outside my window, the New York traffic never ceasing to honk, beep, and yell into the late hours of the night. Finishing my meal, I set to work on getting my payments done early. The rent, water, electric, and internet bills all in a row, a furrowed my brow. “God dammit,” I whispered, my three middle fingers on my temples. I shoved the stack of papers over to the other side of the table, telling myself I’d get them done later, despite knowing I’d be panicking to get them done eventually. However, that wasn’t my concern at that moment. I was tired as fuck and needed to sleep, even if it was now only seven thirty.

        Practically throwing myself onto small couch in front of the television, I didn’t even bother changing out of my clothes. Switching on whatever show I could find, I somehow managed to fall asleep to the uneventful and intelligent banter of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”, my eyes practically closing the moment the bright screen lit the room ever so slightly. I had tomorrow off, so I would technically be able to sleep for as long as I liked. That’s what I usually did anyway. I’d never been much of a partier and the fact that I’d said yes to drinks with the guys tomorrow was baffling to me. I’d never taken to alcohol very well, and tended to get drunk quickly and wake up the next morning with a worse hangover than my friends who think it’s perfectly fine to knock back half the bottle of vodka every time we go out. I didn’t care, though. My eyes shut tight, and I let myself go.

  



End file.
